"Ah! I'm late, I'm late, I'm going to be late"
In a hurry, Lala got up and ran downstairs with the goal of not being late to school.
However, once downstairs she stopped abruptly.
"Yami? What are you doing here?!" she asked, both surprised and embarrassed, hoping she hadn't heard anything.
Of course, when it came to soundproofing, even if you used special instruments on the wall of Lala's room it would be useless, total sound isolation, but her nerves made her forget that for a moment.
"I have the day off" Yami replied naturally.
"I thought normal days off were Sundays?" Lala asked.
"They are" Yami simply nodded without explaining anything else before asking, "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I... slept here?" Lala replied.
Yami simply looked at her and nodded, believing her.
Lala sighed in relief and hurriedly moved around the house again. Between running up and down the stairs looking for things and changing clothes about three times before finally dressing properly without forgetting any piece of clothing, Yami finally decided to speak.
"It's late. Why don't you skip school?"
"E-eh? That's bad, right? Skipping school. Yui would get mad at me" Lala replied while already imagining the lecture Yui would give her if she did.
On the other hand, seeing the time, only five minutes before classes started, made her consider it for a second.
"But Yuuji skips all the time?" Yami asked with genuine innocence.
Having never attended school herself, nor cared about doing so, the only impression she had of it was a place both Yuuji and Mikan went to. However, Yuuji usually skipped more often than he attended.
And although Mikan didn't, Yami simply associated that with her friend's responsible personality rather than any obligation.
Yami's words hit Lala immediately and she smiled as a new idea appeared.
"You're right. I'll skip today!" she declared, going from initial nervousness to exaggerated and incomprehensible pride over such a common action.
"So, what do people do on a skipped day?" she asked while sitting in front of Yami at the table.
"The same things as on a normal day" Yami replied.
"I see" Lala nodded while thinking. "Then first... breakfast, that's it! Since you're here, I'll prepare something for you."
"I have taiyaki" Yami shook her head while showing the snack she had been eating the whole time. At the same time, she seemed to remember something and raised it toward Lala. "Want one?"
"No, today I'll make breakfast myself" the alien princess refused while heading toward the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
Yami simply watched her while calmly continuing to eat her taiyaki.
"Yami!"
"What is it?"
"Nothing. There's nothing here. No ingredients. I used everything last night" Lala said with an expression of complete panic and fear.
However, an instant later her expression changed again into the usual Lala. If Yami hadn't been an artificial being with some of the best reflexes in the entire galaxy, she probably wouldn't have noticed it.
"Don't worry" she said before Yami could say anything. "Since there are no ingredients, I just have to make them myself."
Although Yami didn't understand what she meant at first, she didn't need to when, the second after Lala ran upstairs, the entire house disappeared, both girls reappearing in a pink ocean.
"Where are we?" Yami asked, speaking easily even underwater.
Lala didn't answer.
From her D-Dial she pulled out a huge harpoon and held it with both hands, closed one eye while aiming, and fired at a nearby shark-like creature made entirely out of bread.
'What is she doing?' Yami wondered while watching her absurd actions.
At the same time, she was about to take another bite of her favorite snack, but stopped and frowned after noticing it was now soaked and inedible.
Her hair transformed into a hand full of scissors, cutting the taiyaki into hundreds of small pieces that she fed to the fish swimming around them.
When she looked back at Lala she realized that whatever she had planned had failed. What should have been Lala's prey was dragging her around thanks to the harpoon chain, giving her a free ride around the area.
In the end, as if it were some kind of cosmic joke, Yami watched the shark turn around and charge directly at her.
Although Yami wasn't afraid, since she could easily kill it, she didn't need to. One meter before hitting her, it disappeared, along with everything around them, both girls reappearing in the kitchen they had vanished from before.
Because of the accumulated momentum, Lala appeared in midair and went flying into a wall.
"Cough cough." She came out of the impact immediately unharmed as if the hit had never happened, only coughing a little because of the dust she inhaled.
"That didn't go well" she sighed.
"What were you trying to do?" Yami asked while drying both herself and Lala.
"Ah, thanks!" Lala thanked her before explaining, "There are fish pretty similar to taiyaki on a planet I visited before, I was trying to catch some."
'I'm pretty sure those weren't fish' Yami thought before asking out loud, "But if you catch them, would that still count as cooking?"
"...You're right" Lala said while making a disappointed expression again before quickly cheering up. "Alright, plan B!... or C, I think."
"Plan C?"
"I'll go to Sakvebi, a planet entirely made of things that are edible on Earth, gather ingredients while traveling around the world, and finally prepare the best taiyaki in the universe for your breakfast!" Lala declared.
"Wouldn't that take too long?"
"Don't worry" Lala smiled confidently. "I can travel through space-time with this" she said while showing a crystal hourglass-like artifact in her right hand.
"You're going to time travel just to make me breakfast?"
"Exactly!" Lala nodded with a smile, not finding anything strange about that.
Immediately she flipped the hourglass. Everything around them seemed to stop for a moment, the world's colors vanished, replaced by black and white monochrome, and the lines separating objects blurred.
And after that... nothing happened, everything simply returned to normal.
"So, how does it work?"
"Well, I think it doesn't?" Lala replied embarrassed. "Alright, I barely used it anyway."
She said that while tossing it aside dismissively, but before it hit the ground the device was absorbed back into the D-Dial.
"Plan D. We'll use a matter transformer to directly convert trash into the necessary ingredients to make homemade taiyaki." Without being discouraged by her previous failure, Lala immediately proposed her new plan.
"If you can turn trash into ingredients, why not turn it directly into taiyaki? Besides, I don't want to eat trash" Yami shook her head. With her internal taste-control system she could eat garbage anytime and it would taste delicious, yet she never had and didn't plan to start now.
"Ah... you're right" Lala said disappointed. "Then...!"
Before Lala could finish saying her new idea, Yami pulled another taiyaki from a paper bag and stuffed it into her mouth, forcefully silencing her.
"Eat" Yami said tiredly.
Gulp.
Lala swallowed before replying.
"...Okay."
"Well, this is fine too" she said after a while while eating, which only confused Yami.
After some silence while both ate their snacks, Yami broke the silence.
"Why do you always smile?"
"What?" Lala asked confused.
"When there were no ingredients. When your first plan failed. When I told you to eat. You had a disappointed face, you looked sad, but immediately you smiled and went back to being... Lala. Why?"
"Why, huh?" Lala murmured, surprised by the question. "Well, there's no reason to stay sad, right? Even if one plan fails, I just have to try something else.
If I let myself get carried away by disappointment I'll become sadder and sadder, but if instead I smile at that moment and think about good things, I'll realize the problem isn't that serious and that it can be fixed, making me happier and happier" Lala explained with a smile.
"So you get sad too" Yami said surprised.
"Of course I do! When my inventions fail. When things don't go the way I want! When someone gets hurt! I get sad but... being sad is pointless and doesn't help anything. It's better to smile and try to fix it."
"Smile. I'll try it" Yami said while clenching her fists with determination.
"Hehe, Yami is adorable" Lala smiled while patting Yami's head. "By the way, why all these questions?"
"I want to understand others better so I can make a good impression."
"A good impression?"
"Yes, on my parents, they're coming today" Yami nodded.
The moment she heard those words, Lala's cheerful expression disappeared instantly and her hand froze.
"Y-Yuuji's parents? They're coming today? You mean just his mother or...?"
"Father and mother" Yami nodded.
"T-this... THIS IS A PROBLEM!!!"
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)